Phase Noise Reduction in Voltage Controlled Oscillators (VCO) in L Band using Superconducting Metamaterial Structures

Recently, the advances in wireless communications increase demand for low phase noise voltage controlled oscillators (VCO) as one of the most important building block of any frequency synthesizers. Voltage controlled oscillator phase noise is depend on the resonator quality factor. Using superconductors in the metamaterial leads to three unique features of very low losses, smaller dimensions of the structure, and increased resonator quality factor. In this paper, by using these properties in the resonator structure, we have been able to reduce the phase noise in superconducting metamaterial at offset frequency of 100 kHz, in the L band frequency with a tuning range of 150 MHz to value of -150 dBc/Hz. The resonator has been discussed in two types of copper and superconducting metamaterial, and the results are compared with each other. It will be shown how phase noise of voltage controlled oscillators can be reduced by using superconducting microwave resonators.